Writing on truthdig, Eugene Robinson, poses a salient and relevant question. The use of drones might be the weapons of choice to-go-to for Obama, but are they not mere implements for murdering people - and therefore aren't all Americans complicit in standing back and allowing the drones to be used as they are?
"U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries may be militarily effective, but they are killing innocent civilians in a way that is obscene and immoral. I’m afraid that ignoring this ugly fact makes Americans complicit in murder.
It is understandable why President Obama has made drone attacks his go-to weapon in the fight against terrorists and the Taliban. Armed, pilotless aircraft allow the CIA and the military to target individuals in enemy strongholds without putting U.S. lives at risk. But efficacy is not legitimacy, and I don’t see how drone strikes can be considered a wholly legitimate way to wage war.
This is an unpopular view in Washington—especially at the White House, where Obama and his aides have done much to erase the stain on the nation’s honor left by the excesses of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terrorism. It is to his great credit that Obama ended torture, shut down the CIA’s secret overseas prisons and made a good-faith effort to close the detention center at Guantanamo.
But Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones, and his version of the terror war looks a lot like a campaign of assassination.
Even if the intelligence agents and military officers who operate the drones have perfect knowledge—meaning they are absolutely certain the target is a dangerous enemy—and fire the drones’ missiles with perfect accuracy, this amounts to summary execution. Is such killing morally defensible?
To defend enforcing a death sentence with no due process, at a minimum you have to accept that the fight against terrorists is properly defined as a war. Obama sharply questioned that conceptual framework when he was running for president in 2008; these days, he uses the word “war” frequently. But I have never heard him embrace the theory of a global Manichaean conflict in which, as Bush said, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
"U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries may be militarily effective, but they are killing innocent civilians in a way that is obscene and immoral. I’m afraid that ignoring this ugly fact makes Americans complicit in murder.
It is understandable why President Obama has made drone attacks his go-to weapon in the fight against terrorists and the Taliban. Armed, pilotless aircraft allow the CIA and the military to target individuals in enemy strongholds without putting U.S. lives at risk. But efficacy is not legitimacy, and I don’t see how drone strikes can be considered a wholly legitimate way to wage war.
This is an unpopular view in Washington—especially at the White House, where Obama and his aides have done much to erase the stain on the nation’s honor left by the excesses of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terrorism. It is to his great credit that Obama ended torture, shut down the CIA’s secret overseas prisons and made a good-faith effort to close the detention center at Guantanamo.
But Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones, and his version of the terror war looks a lot like a campaign of assassination.
Even if the intelligence agents and military officers who operate the drones have perfect knowledge—meaning they are absolutely certain the target is a dangerous enemy—and fire the drones’ missiles with perfect accuracy, this amounts to summary execution. Is such killing morally defensible?
To defend enforcing a death sentence with no due process, at a minimum you have to accept that the fight against terrorists is properly defined as a war. Obama sharply questioned that conceptual framework when he was running for president in 2008; these days, he uses the word “war” frequently. But I have never heard him embrace the theory of a global Manichaean conflict in which, as Bush said, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
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